


Rule of Law

by AbelQuartz



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon), Steven Universe (Fandom)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Car Accident, Death, Doctor - Freeform, Drama, F/M, Family, Hospital, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Medical, Mentioned Connie Maheswaran, Mentioned Greg Universe, Mentioned Steven Universe, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 15:04:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9767378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbelQuartz/pseuds/AbelQuartz
Summary: In the tumultuous times of Beach City’s citizens, we turn to the parents of the Maheswaran family dealing with their nights together and separately. Priyanka and Doug have their own demons, and their own sanctuaries. One night, one family, two lives - perhaps, despite the weight of living, they’re more connected than they think.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains/implies depictions of elements that may induce traumatic and/or unpleasant experiences in some readers, and as such has been tagged appropriately. Please use your own discretion, and put mental health first. If you feel something has been misunderstood or inappropriately tagged, please send me a message and I will adjust accordingly.

Without cream and sugar, there wasn’t much point to coffee, if he was being honest with himself. Priyanka wouldn’t touch the stuff at night, but Doug needed it to keep himself alert on the job. Moving through the ranks was not offered to him as often as he would like, and getting this far and being this solid was a blessing he didn’t want to turn down.

The man’s fingers tapped on the edge of the mug as he lifted it to his lips hesitantly. Dark circles in the surface matched the ones underneath his eyes. Just one sip confirmed what he already knew about his tastes. He set it down and picked the newspaper back up, shoulders rolling with disappointment.

A new moon was rising over the ocean somewhere near. Maybe, Doug thought, he could see it on the horizon before it was lost in the clouds once more.

Priyanka’s footsteps made even the most stoic stair squeak upon her descent. She was hurried, even though she wasn’t anywhere close to late yet. Being on call at this point in the year was unpredictable, and any kind of chaos could make the woman’s skin tighten like a bowstring.

“I tried talking to Connie. She’s anxious about something again,” the doctor muttered, rummaging through the refrigerator. “The Universe boy is going somewhere.”

Doug glanced up to watch his wife prepare for her shift. Balsamic vinaigrette (low-calorie) was tossed into her bag, and a to-go salad container followed. He knew her preference down to a science. Baby spinach, mixed greens, four or five cherry tomatoes, and crumbled feta – snapped shut, tossed with the dressing, and eaten hurriedly with a drop staining her scrubs.

“Apparently this one – this trip is dangerous? Somehow? I try not to bring it up to his father but I’m _this_ close to going over and calling CPS sometimes.”

Doug nodded and pretended to sip his bitter coffee. It was cold.

Priyanka reached into the cabinet opposite the refrigerator and pulled out one of twenty identical wine glasses. This bottle waiting on the counter, her husband noted, was a different brand. She pulled out the rubber stopper and poured a generous half-glass.

“She isn’t going to try to go with him, is she?”

“No. No, apparently, he actually wanted her to stay.”

“That’s a first.”

Priyanka opened her mouth to reply, but only nodded in agreement and sipped.

Doug cleared his throat, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Dear, do you really think that this is all good for her?”

“Oh, for goodness sake, I have no idea,” she muttered. “I’ve almost stopped trying to keep track of that. She’s going to be…fourteen soon. We need to start looking at driving programs and AP classes and she’s going to have to decide for herself whether or not she cares about it.”

“It? What is ‘it’ in this scenario?”

The doctor took a seat, reaching over to take the newspaper from her husband. She pulled out the sports section, turning the pages over the colored photographs until she flattened out the crossword puzzle.

“Her education. Her real life, Doug! All of this, all of the things we made for her. I’m sorry, I’m just so _stressed_ about her and she won’t let me _show_ that because she thinks that we’re just going to take it all away again.”

“Sometimes it’s pretty tempting,” he replied, raising his eyebrows. “It wouldn’t be the right thing to do, I suppose, but we have the right and the responsibility as her parents to pull her back.”

Whatever, though, were they pulling her back from? Both of them glanced up seconds apart, just missing each other’s exhausted stares. Their memories aligned in unnerved harmony despite this, memories of their daughter’s bumps and bruises, of her hands bound by tape and steel in her eyes, of the sword – a _real_ sword, _honestly_ – that she carried with so much pride.

“What do you think of him?”

Doug paused with another faux-drink in between the table and his mouth. He set his mug down and, in his head, tested the intonation in Priyanka’s question.

He cleared his throat. “Clearly, Steven’s a responsible young man. Charming, certainly, and he’s got heart and talent and all those good things. It’s a strange living situation, but he’s not quite as eccentric as those women, so that’s…good.”

Another pause. “Okay, what’s wrong with him.”

“He’s not like – like us!” Priyanka took another sip, her head turning to scan the puzzle in front of her, an unopened pen on the table between the two adults. “I can’t find any records of him in the hospital, Doug. None, not even a birth certificate. What sort of person doesn’t have a birth certificate? No immunizations, no checkups, no vital documents whatsoever. That’s literally impossible!”

“Are you sure that he was born here? Like, in this country?”

“Connie told me that he was born and raised in this town. He’s never lived anywhere but with his father and with the –“ And the woman wrinkled her nose, like the word about to come off her tongue was somehow foreign or unpronounceable. “ – the Gems.”

“Have you tried to ask about Greg’s documents? Heck, I bet he’d give them over if you just asked to take a look,” he said.

Priyanka shook her head. “I have my limits.”

Doug nodded sagely and took his coffee to the sink, letting it slide down into the drain with disdain. Greg was nice enough, and they knew he had faced some much rougher financial seas than either Priyanka or Doug. The man rinsed his mug out and sighed to himself. Well, not everyone could be a millionaire.

The doctor was pretending to pay attention to her crossword puzzle when her husband turned back. She almost started as his hands came down to hug her from behind, his body leaning over her. Doug’s stubble brushed against her cheek. It was one of those annoyances that she couldn’t fault him for considering the shaky schedule and the late nights they had both been dealing with, but she made a mental note to remind him to shave.

“Do you think that we should…do something as a family?” he murmured, kissing the curve of her upper jaw. “Go somewhere, see a movie, go out to eat? We’re running around so much and worrying about the same things over and over.”

“We worry about the same things because they’re important.”

“But when was the last time we worried about ourselves?”

Priyanka pushed herself away from the table, reaching for her wine as Doug’s hands slid away from her body. “I _do_ worry about us. Right now, we can’t focus on us. There’s too much that depends on you and me. What about Connie? We can’t just let her run amuck without us. She’s getting older but she’s still far too young for that.”

Doug crossed his arms across his chest and leaned on the counter by the sink. His wife folded up the crossword puzzle and secured the newspaper with a pen, creasing the edges of the section with practiced precision.

“If we don’t take care of ourselves, we won’t be able to take responsibility for anything at all,” the man said, watching Priyanka tidy herself to leave.

She ignored him in that familiar manner that told him she heard every word he said.

“What are you scared of?”

Her fingers squeezed the stem of her wine glass. There was barely a second’s rest before she raised it to her lips and finished what was left.

“I’m scared of making choices that don’t matter, Doug. I’m scared of helping our daughter where she doesn’t need help, because I don’t know when the day is going to come when Connie wants to forget she ever needed help. And the more she goes out with that boy, and the stronger she feels, the more it’s going to hurt when she falls – and she’s going to fall alone.”

His arms uncrossed and clenched the edge of the counter behind him.

“She will _not_ be alone. Don’t even say that.”

“Connie’s pushing us away, whether she knows is or not!” Priyanka snapped, spinning to set her glass on the table. “She’s isolating herself from – from reality, Doug. Nobody can live some magical life without being hurt, and being stressed, and from all the things that make life so hard! It’s a fantasy. It’s nothing but a dangerous fantasy.”

“So what do you suggest we do? Huh? Do we cut her off from Steven completely, and, and forbid them from seeing each other? They’re teenagers, Priyanka. They have to make their own paths somehow, and they have to learn when they’re wrong. Sometimes, they have to learn the hard way.”

“Why do they have to learn the hard way!? Why can’t –“

“ _Because_ , Priyanka –“  Doug shouted. In the beat that followed, both adults breathed in. “– because the world doesn’t care how planned things are or how things are supposed to work. Accidents can happen and will happen and we can’t pretend like we live in our own fantasy world where everything will turn out perfectly if we worry enough.”

The doctor froze with her hands unclenched but still shaking as she averted her eyes. Her fingers came up to rub at the corner of her mouth, her nails pressing into the wrinkles around her frown, speckled with the remnants of mauve polish.

“We can still try,” she murmured.

But her husband stepped forwards, taking her other hand and clasping it in his own. Doug’s stoniness was faltering, a wavering edge in his voice.

“I almost lost you once because of h- stress, on you. And…and now I feel like I’m losing you again. Connie was not an accident – she was our decision. Sometimes, that decision means we have to prepare for consequences we might not like,” he whispered.

Priyanka jerked her hand away, grabbing her back as she backed off from the man in front of her. Her hand went defensively to her abdomen as she glared, trying to forget that she had ever forgotten. One month early, the hospital had almost not had enough room for them. When the three of them climbed back into the car the next week, she could still smell the blood.

“Your decision. Not mine.”

The blue linoleum was cold under their feet. Priyanka took her keys from the hooks and her coat from the banister. Her presence seemed to be gone as suddenly as it had arrived.

* * *

 

She could do office notes. That would take up some time.

It was a twenty minute drive to the hospital almost to the second. In her first couple trips, she had learned the road, learned the traffic, and had paced herself to know exactly when to leave the house. With a life possibly in the balance, these sorts of things became more important.

Priyanka slipped into her parking space and checked the clock. Nineteen minutes.

The break room and the hallways were their same cool color as usual, a calming dimness caked over the halls. Tucked under her arm was the bag with her essentials. In her hand the doctor clasped her cell phone, trying not to fidget and press any of the buttons. Her scrubs felt surprisingly heavy, the loose fabric pressing against her legs as she walked.

There were three significant charts Priyanka wanted to finish, including that refugee family who had come from Keystone General, and Mrs. Ortiz, if she could ever get her to come in without talking about her radio shows. A doctor’s patience with her patients only went so far. The woman checked for messages on her phone, glancing up as she turned the corner to her office.

She stopped and stared at the doorway to the examination room on her right. A four-fingered clawmark scraped away the paint on the frame, with other subtle and similar indentations in the walls and ceiling. Priyanka remembered the exact sound that thing had made as it lumbered towards them. Each footstep dragged on the linoleum, masking the gurgling that came from within its body.

_I have no mouth…_

The doctor shuddered and continued to her workspace. Dr. Dowling sat on the computer opposite her, in a room with four quadrants. Two partitions separated the pairs of computers on either half of the room, with a hallway running from the open door to the back wall.

“Hey, Hasan.”

“Hello, Priyanka.”

Dr. Dowling still wore a business shirt and tie, each in their own shade of deep blue. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he turned, dark eyes brimming with the same concern that he usually saved for his patients. Above his station a Sudanese flag was unfurled, the edge draping behind his upper shelf’s photographs of himself and his late father in the family’s hometown.

“It’s been a quiet night,” he said, “but we cannot let our guard down. Maternity’s been having a rough time with late-night deliveries. Some babies just pick the worst timing, yes?”

He smiled at the doctor, and Priyanka couldn’t help but let herself grin. Hasan was just too kind to her to let herself stay cold with him around. Her mind still weighed, but at least the world around her wasn’t as heavy as before.

“Yeah, looks like tonight’s just for notes. I have a lot to catch up on.”

She felt his gaze on her back as she turned on her desktop. “…yes?”

“You know you don’t have to come in unless you’re paged. Why not finish these up at home?”

There it was, delivered to her with a side of kindness. She leaned back in her chair, rubbing her tired eyes.

“Doug and I had…a disagreement. Not a fight,” Priyanka said, frowning. “I don’t think it was a fight, not really. I’m just stressed about Connie and we’re having some tough talks.”

Hasan clicked his tongue knowingly, twisting the wedding band on his left hand in thought.

“I understand. Fatima and I had the same kind of talks before the twins.”

_No, Hasan. For your sake and hers, I hope you certainly did not._

Next to the doctor’s monitor he had a picture of his wife with their children, a girl and a boy in swaddled white both sleeping in her arms. A moment of peace was easy to capture if only because those moments were latched upon, a reminder that in between caring for infants, there were pieces of this calm.

Priyanka took a picture down from her own shelf to examine. Connie’s second grade portrait was one of her favorites, especially because the photographer they hired was actually decent that year. But her little girl was also so nervous, so ready to please. Her tiny white blouse buttoned down to the hem of her dress, a subtle lilac, with her hands folded in her lap.

She had had long hair even back then, pulled back with a headband and draping just past her shoulder blades. Even then, her glasses had been too big, too round, making her look owl-like and terrified. Maybe Connie always looked like that. Not recently.

Looking back, it was hard to believe she had almost carried through. The choice had never been made, though, not really. Doug was so happy with the news, as if he had been trying, but she knew that he would have asked first. He always asked first. Neither one of them had asked for a child. Priyanka felt a sharp pain in her belly, shifting in her chair.

“Priyanka?”

“I-I’m fine. Just a little stressed.”

“You’re always a little stressed. You know that’s not healthy.”

It wasn’t healthy for her or her family. It wasn’t fair to herself or her family. But it was the only way that she could have control. Knowing everything was the key to stopping anything, any kind of adversity and shadowy thought. Indecision had almost cost her a life. Whose? It didn’t matter now.

She needed to stop thinking about this. The woman rested her head in her hands, leaning on her desk with the blue logon screen lighting up every line in her face.

The Universe boy didn’t have to care about the unknown. The unknown was all he had ever known in his life, blessed ignorance and complacency. His mother – what was her name again? – wasn’t around the family, and while Priyanka imagined the worst with some sympathy, she truly couldn’t figure out the specifics.

_It’s none of my business,_ she mouthed to herself, making eye contact with her muted reflection. In time, it would be Connie’s business, and as much as she mentally forbade it, no amount of silence could stop that. He had shown Priyanka his prowess once, and perhaps that could be enough someday – but there was no magical shield against taxes, or insurance, or college entrance exams.

She had learned about all of those things before they were a challenge, when they posed threats to her, and so she learned. So should her child learn, and so should she feel: fear, preparation, and conquering. If everything could be confined to laws, restricted in their power, then they posed no threat, not anymore.

“Are you going to answer that?”

The woman hadn’t noticed her phone vibrating until Hasan pointed it out. Without turning, she swiped the call open and held it to her head.

“This is Doctor Maheswaran.”

A moment’s silence filled the office as she listened. Dr. Dowling kept an ear bent towards her as he typed away, filling out a chart that he could recite in his sleep.

“Right away,” she said, ending the call and gathering her bags.

“What’s happening?”

“Another car accident. Some kids drag racing down by the hills lost control and they’re in bad shape. Caucasian male, about nineteen, multiple fractures, skull trauma. It’s going to be a long night for me after all.”

Hasan checked his own phone with a frown. “I should have gotten a call for that, or they should’ve paged b- “

Priyanka took a deep breath as she gathered her coat around her scrubs, shaking her head. Hasan stared for a moment, then nodded in understanding. There was no need for the pair of them there if half the patients might be gone by the time they arrived.

She walked out down the hallway. Each turn was deliberate, each footstep turned towards the surgical ward with the precision of a diamond’s structure and the weight of a dying star. Nothing drew her or compelled her but her own decisions. That was how it should be. That was how it used to be always.

Her hands raised as she opened the doors to the emergency room. It was all she could see now, those hands. First a wrinkled brown, then a sterile white with no time in between. Surgery and her intensive medical work took time away from her.

Priyanka wondered how much time had been taken from her when she was busy focusing on the elaborate plans of her own life now. A series of vignettes complicated her memories as she prepped for surgery, removing shards of metal from in between wrist bones, washing out glowing chemicals from the scars in the chest, sewing up the paleness with stark black thread with the swiftness of a pickpocket.

No. No, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t until after that her memory filled itself with gaps. In the interim, she could remember every detail. The diagrams from her old medical textbooks and grainy videos played through as she cut and sewed and healed. Everything about what she was doing was what she knew she was supposed to do. The doctor had no extraneous choice but failure.

It wasn’t until the coolness of the water ran over her hands that she could feel herself once more. All that could be done had been done. She was alone in the women’s restroom.

In the calmness of the sink, Priyanka looked at herself in the mirror, and offered silent thanks that she was too tired for true introspection. Having never preened or pranced for the sake of it, she just hoped that whatever she had was dignified. She was a doctor. It was what she did.

The water ran over her hands like the pages of a good book. Priyanka Maheswaran closed her eyes and remembered that summer, the first summer where they had stayed in the same place for a whole year. Connie was four. Doug was in between jobs.

Celebrating their little milestone, they had found a private picnic area in the woods, in a national park, a place where there were few visitors and fewer disturbances. With her feet in the shallows of a sunlit stream, the woman watched her daughter splash without hesitation, soaking the hem of her new sundress. And for the first time, Priyanka didn’t tell her off or give her any warnings, didn’t remind her of the time she had spent buying that dress just for her.

Instead, her child had come up with those deep, perfect eyes and, after they dried, Priyanka took Connie into her lap underneath an oak tree. Doug closed his eyes and the three sat there as Connie listened to her mother read aloud from a book they had bought that morning. What was the book? What was it about? What –

The florescent ichor spluttered above the doctor’s head as she snapped open her eyes. The water had stopped. Her hands rested on the edge of the sink. The lightbulb coughed briefly, then died without a word. Priyanka took one more look at her face now. Half was in shadow, pulled towards the dead corner of the restroom.

She reminded herself to leave a message for the maintenance crew. She had to make a call after that to call in an autopsy report. It was for insurance.

The woman’s hands dripped as she brought them to her sides, a drop running down the side of her perfect white coat. When she brought up her fingers to wipe her face, everything mixed together, and once more, Priyanka was happy to forget.

* * *

 

He could see the orange lights blocking off the road before he had even reached the sign warning about the city limits. Blinking in his face, they made a barrier of deterrents that forced him to slow and stop in front of the officer.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Doug called.

He stepped out of his little coupe, engine puttering and headlights flashing into the warning beams. The policeman regarded him warily until the man flashed his badge, the private security company and the police force having known of each other in turn.

“We’ve got some complaints of racing and underage drivers down the coastal path,” the police officer muttered, gesturing with his neck in the direction of the road behind him. “We’re blocking off all possible exits and we’re hoping to slap these kids with a DUI. ‘s not good for anyone involved.”

“You got that right.”

Doug turned back around and opened his cell phone, one hand on his hip as he scrolled through. Sure enough, there it was, an e-mail sent a minute and a half ago from his supervisor telling him to not bother coming in tonight. Comp was all good, and they could finagle it around a sick day or something, but there wasn’t anything to do besides that.

“You got som’place to be?”

Doug looked back up to the policeman, huddling his coat around him as he stepped back into the car.

“Not anymore. Thanks, though.”

Driving back home was as harrowing a path as any. Coming up to the intersection and the stop sign that would take him back in the direction of their little suburb, Doug leaned back in his seat. There were no other drivers that he could see. Many of the lights on the sidewalk were turned off, and even the streetlights seemed dim.

He didn’t want to go to bed alone. He didn’t want to go to bed at all, not with all that in his system and with everything so hectic. As much as the man was loathe to admit it, Priyanka’s stress had made him more focused over the years, and all the qualities that he had wanted to improve upon made themselves manifest in daily activities.

All of the organization was complete and checked, double-checked. Bills were payed, food was bought, lives were led, and all without a hitch for the most part. The satisfaction of a job well done blanketed his stomach lining where the gnawing acid had already eaten away.

Doug turned left. He went fifteen miles under the speed limit as he drove past salt-encrusted pawn shops, tourist traps with anchors in the windows, artist’s stations with the same paintings of a lighthouse that every passerby wanted to replicate. It was the season of copying, always copying, always stagnating, always staying ahead of change with an insistence on order that brought nothing but rot.

The intrusive lyricism made him jolt awake again as he found himself in a smaller suburb, one he had seen before but couldn’t quite remember. He had been here recently, or maybe it was a few months ago.

It wasn’t until he saw the garage with the light on, flooding out through a decrepit curtain into the pavement, that he recognized where in his memory he could place the street. Doug pulled up on the sidewalk and peered into the space, past the cloth and into the ‘room.’ There she was.

Vidalia’s gallery wasn’t open to the public, nor was it really open at all. But having been over with Greg and company for cards, and having driven past the place more than once, Doug understood the significance of her private space. The woman never really payed attention to her own house with pride or with shame; she merely lived. It was envious, really.

As soon as he had turned his engine off, she was peering out from behind the curtain. Despite the hour, she still grinned as he stepped out onto the pavement.

“Mister Maheswaran, to what do I owe the honor?”

“The honor of work being cancelled and me having a bit of wanderlust.”

“Cancelled? That’s not slang for the f-word, is it?”

“Hm? Oh, no, nono, the roads got closed down. Something about kids and racing and all that nonsense.”

Vidalia stiffened, but transferred the motion into a shiver, crossing her arms over her chest. She was dressed in plaid pajama bottoms and a plain granite sweatshirt, comfort clothes for a comfortable time. There was paint on her knuckles.

“That might be my Sour Cream and his misfits,” she scoffed. “They’re out doing dumb teenager things, and then they’ll rave somewhere, and he’ll sleep until noon. That’s the way things go.”

Doug stepped inside, unzipping his coat. There was a space heating going inside the curtained area, and already he was feeling a little too warm.

“What about that kid of yours? She’s getting into her teenage years – so has she started being a smart little pain in the butt yet?” Vidalia continued.

“She’s always been smart. A pain? Never.”

“Lucky man.”

Doug took a seat in a purple armchair, letting his coat practically fall off of his arms. Vidalia opened up a refrigerator and pulled out two green cans of ginger ale, tossing one in Doug’s direction. With the cops out tonight, other beverages were off the table for now.

“But what are you doing up? Is your little one doing okay?”

“Oh, Onion went to bed hours ago,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I’ve just been sleeping poorly recently. Might be arthritis. Might just be because I’m getting restless. I can’t tell any longer, but it don’t make a difference. A night’s a night.”

The suburban strip was quiet, devoid of even crickets at this time of year. In the crispness of the air, the stars shone through, piercing the crust of the sky like needles through skin. In the sanctuary of the garage, both adults could take their sodas in warmth and in peace, without worrying about who was passing them by. Doug felt a certain peace.

Raising two children alone, he had expected Vidalia to be stressed about something, certainly, anything pertaining to her children. Sour Cream might be applying to colleges soon, and from what little he saw or knew about Onion, things weren’t easy with him, either.

“How’s your daughter besides the fact?” Vidalia asked. “Connie, right?”

“Connie, yeah.”

How was she? She could have answered that with all the perky enthusiasm she reserved for her mother after a long day, or for lying. All the older woman had here was a tired counterpart.

“She’s good as far as I can see. School’s going wonderfully, grades are great. Her music lessons are really picking up, but I think that’s because she’s been hanging around – “

Before he could even terminate the thought coming out of his mouth, Vidalia laughed and slapped her knee. She was perched on the top of a stepladder, hunched over like a pale, smirking gargoyle.

“She’s been hanging around little Mister Universe,” she chuckled.

“Mhm.”

“Trust me, I’ve known Steven since he was just in Greg’s imagination. The kid’s totally harmless, even if he is a little exuberant at times.”

That wasn’t quite what Doug was worried about, but he didn’t know how to express that. He had no qualms with the boy, and yet he had wonders, long-term wonders that he would have never thought about without the question of his own guardianship. The man wondered how he had been as an example to his daughter, an example of a father, a husband, an adult.

“Doug? What’re you stewing in over there?”

“I… Vidalia, how do I know if I’m a good parent?”

She sighed and raised her ginger ale to her lips, scraping the metal along the dead skin.

“Shoot. That’s awfully heavy to fret over at this time of night.”

“When is it ever easy to think about, though?”

She shrugged and took another drink as she thought. Doug clasped the coolness of the can in both hands, fingers laced together, closing up the open wound of his mind that was spilling out into their conversation.

“Well, I guess it’s about what you remember,” she said slowly. “You grow up with your children, get memories of them, good times and lessons learned, and there’s so much, because they take up every second of your time, and every moment of your life. If you can only remember good things, then it’s like your kids aren’t human, they’re just little dolls that make you angry whenever they mess up at all. But if you can only remember bad things, then your kids will be afraid to do anything because you’ll yell at them no matter what. Being a good parent means keeping that balance between how far your children have come and how far they need to go still.”

Doug stared at the crack in the curtain, his feet propped up on the worn-out cushion, the same graying pattern as the chair underneath him.

“So. Whaddaya remember, Doug?”

He couldn’t help but grin.

“Everything.”

“Oh, you’re full of it.”

“Yeah, but a dad can dream, right?”

Both of them exchanged awkward, forced laughter at the thought of the one dad in their lives who didn’t dream, but merely demanded. Sour Cream was connected to Marty more than Doug, and certainly more than Vidalia wanted to be. But he was indeed the perfect example of what not to do as a parent. The memories were tainted, and the relationship even more so.

The two adults sipped in silence for a moment. Doug tapped on his can as he stared at a corner of the garage, three lines intersecting in empty space. He tried to remember.

“Hey, Vidalia, what do you remember the most? About either of yours, I mean.”

“If I have to look back, I find myself losing the specifics. You know?” she said. “There are the greatest hits, and then in between, little stories, and after that what’s the point?”

“Because then you get all the weird little details –“

“– about things like a breakfast you had in upstate Empire on some vacation?”

“Or taking a photograph after the end of summer break?”

“The small things. Lovely and useless.”

Vidalia raised her tin chalice in deference to the memories that overtook the big picture, and Doug responded in like kind. The man cleared his throat as he finished his soda, then snorted in laughter as he put the empty can on the armrest.

“What’s so funny?” Vidalia asked.

“Just… Well, this is relaxing, for the first time, and I’m feeling good that I’m able to let go and not remember anything for a while. Just sit and forget and get tired enough to not care about anything in the world.”

He stretched his arms in front of himself and sighed. “It feels good, I think.”

Vidalia nodded slowly, sipping from her ginger ale. Glancing over to her chair, Doug noticed new paintings, a new remembrance. One was of her youngest, still and smiling, a hint of a smirk on his usually expressionless face. The other was unfinished, but Sour Cream’s sketch was overlaid onto the canvas, the outline of his wavy hair and signature sweatshirt clearly demarcated.

Inside the house, the phone rang and made both adults jump. Vidalia frowned, tossing her can towards the bucket by the fridge.

“Telemarketers, probably,” she grumbled. “I’ll take care of it.”

Doug remained seated as Vidalia went to answer the phone. He was content to remember tonight, to remember a moment of peace for as long as it could last. Alone in the garage, he sighed and thought of his wife and his daughter – not as memories, but as a future he could depend on. For what? Well. Without them, there wasn’t much point to memory at all, if he was being honest with himself. Doug closed his eyes briefly, letting his glasses slip down his face. He would go home in a minute or two.


End file.
